Pakistan's Guddu, Jamshoro thermal plants to be run on coal

The government of Pakistan will convert two inefficient thermal power plants in Sindh into being coal-fired through a $433 million financing to be provided by the Asian Development Bank.

The conversion of the Guddu and Jamshoro plants would allow the authorities to enhance their production by at least 700MW.

The plan is part of an overall ADB financing of over $1 billion under which the government intended to convert at least three major power plants, including Muzaffargarh, to imported coal in order to reduce heavy reliance on expensive furnace oil and to scale down average generation cost through improved fuel mix.

The major overhaul of and supply of spare parts to the Jamshoro and Guddu thermal power plants, besides recovery of lost capacity, is expected to reduce their generation cost from over Rs16 per unit to about Rs9 per unit, according to a power ministry official.

About 400MW capacity would be regained through the planned overhaul of and supply of equipment and spares to Jamshoro and Guddu plants while 200MW oil-based boilers of Jamshoro would be expanded and converted into a 400MW coal-fired plant.

According to the ADB, the conversion to sub-critical coal-fired system is the least expensive method to diversify the fuel mix away from imported fuel oil.

The rehabilitation and expansion of Jamshoro power plant would also require acquisition of about 80 acres of additional land in the vicinity of the existing plant for ash pond.

The government plans to convert about 4,200MW of thermal power plants to coal under medium-term programme while maintaining a complete ban on new thermal power plants as electricity tariffs have gone beyond affordability limits for consumers.

Mismanagement, poor maintenance and substandard quality of fuel have been some of the key reasons for low capacity and inefficient generation, resulting in the malfunctioning of the Wapda-run power stations.

Wapda has three major generation companies — Jamshoro, Muzaffargarh and Guddu. All steam units of thermal power station at Jamshoro and Muzaffargarh are dual-fuel plants having gas and residual fuel oil (RFO) firing facilities except one Jamshoro unit which has only fuel oil-firing capability. However, these plants are operating on furnace oil due to shortage of natural gas.

The thermal station at Guddu uses medium-calorific raw gas from Mari and Kandhkot.

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